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I followed through with my previous blog post about handing out comic books at Halloween to kids. The industry is trying to create a second "free comic book day" to coincide with Halloween. My biggest problem is that the industry expects kids to come to the store. What we need to do is go where the kids are.

That being said I contacted my LCS and had them order me a box of the mini-comics. I believe it was 200 comics for $30. After giving 11 (1 of each) to a co-worker with small kids, and another 11 to my daughter I had 178 to hand out. I counted leftovers and there are 45 left. So this means I handed out about 133 comics.

There were 2 kids who were not thrilled (one was upset I had no Batman comics, the other said he would just throw it away or give to his dog), but overall the reception was great.

I had parents coming up telling me how it was a great thing to do, I had kids ask me about them (after they ran into their friends who were talking about them). Probably the best part was when my niece (4th grade) a few days later told me that her teacher asked everyone what their favorite thing they got was and one of the boys said that "a guy" was handing out comic books.

I am toying with next year doing the same thing...but also having a box of filler main stream comics and reward kids who dress up as superheroes. Of course I am unsure if it would cause problems with others. Who knows, maybe someone with power will read the success of this and will try to encourage stores next year to recruit their members to do the same thing. Ideally stores would have their Halloween parties the Saturday after Halloween so that as well as handing out the free comics a flyer could be handed out as well telling the kids they could bring it in for a free comic as well.

I was thinking about giving away comics as well, but didn't know about the mini books. I was just going to give away some filler issues, but then second-guessed myself as I thought it might offend some kids or parents due to taste or level of maturity. I didn't want to go through all my books looking for potential issues, nor did I want to give out kiddie-only books like Richie Rich. (Even Archies are not always worry-free these days!).

So ended up buying $60 worth of candy from Costco, gave out 12 bars, ate 5 or 6, then took the rest to work to give away. I wish I would have done what you did. Good job.